This invention relates generally to bandwidth management systems.
Bandwidth management plays a critical part in traffic management of packet networks. Poor bandwidth management can result in congestion, packet loss, and application performance degradation and thus, affect the overall performance of a network. Bandwidth generally refers to the transmission capacity of a computer channel or communications line or bus, usually stated in bits per second (bps). Bandwidth indicates the theoretical maximum capacity of a connection, but as the theoretical bandwidth is approached, negative factors such as transmission delay can cause deterioration in quality.
A type of bandwidth management utilizes Class-Based Queuing (CBQ). CBQ provides mechanisms to partition and share a link bandwidth using hierarchically structured classes. CBQ provides a methodology for classifying packets and queuing them according to criteria defined by an administrator to provide differential forwarding behavior for each traffic class. Packets are classified into a hierarchy of classes based on any combination of a set of matching criteria, such as IP address, protocol, and application type. Each class is assigned a bandwidth and a set of priorities.